The Sunday (Nov. 4) episode of “Treme" is titled “Promised Land,” which Annie and her band play later in the episode. The story is by David Simon and Chris Rose. The teleplay is by Chris Rose and Micah Kibodeaux. The director is Tim Robbins.

'Treme.'Paul Schiraldi/HBO

The spoilers start here.

Toni seeks Judge Gatling on the Friday before Mardi Gras. His clerk (Stacie Davis), listening to Aaron Neville’s “Wrong Number” on the radio, says he has traditions to keep at Galatoire’s.

One of Galatoire’s busiest days of the year, the Friday before Mardi Gras is a premiere local social event. In the past, a line traditionally formed outside the restaurant days before the date. A benefit auction – minimum bid for chairs: $150 – for reservations began in 2006.

Surely it is exhausting work. Never more so than for Friday lunch — holiday Fridays, especially — when the hard-surfaced dining room is boiling with noise and laughter, crowded with ladies in festive hats and men in bow ties. Occasionally, Mardi Gras beads arc among the tables.

On other Fridays, Galatoire’s being a destination and a rite, some luncheon groups eat, drink and laugh their way through the entire afternoon, then remain for dinner in a languorous half-day of leisure that for both good and ill, distinguishes New Orleans from cities with less soul and more commercial vitality.

“The unusual spectacle features surprise celebrities, local music, and a lots of petroleum jelly,” wrote the Times-Picayune’s Ann Maloney in 2009. “The Royal Sonesta Hotel originated the tradition of greasing the support poles as a means to deter over-zealous revelers from shimmying up to much-sought-after balcony space above Bourbon Street.”

The local celebrities participating in 2008 were performers from the Bustout Burlesque troupe.

“We had Foxy Flambeaux (pink costume), Roxie Le Rouge (red costume) and Kitty Twist on the poles,” said Rick Delaup, the troupe’s creator and producer. “Our emcee and magician Dante performed some magic tricks and made an announcement.

“I told (“Treme”) we would try to recreate the event exactly as we had done it then, with the same girls and the same costumes. However, Kitty Twist had moved to West Virginia and she couldn’t make it in. But the director of the episode, actor Tim Robbins, came to see Bustout Burlesque at House of Blues prior to the shoot and was blown away by our singer/dancer Athena (green costume). He wanted her in the episode, so she filled in for Kitty Twist.”

'Treme' explained

These posts are intended as an episode-by-episode guide to the many unexplained New Orleans references in HBO's "Treme."

This post contains spoilers, it also contains a lot of information and links that might help viewers of the series better understand the show's characters and stories, as well as the city and time period in which it's set.

File your own review of this episode here. If you have an explanatory note to supplement this post, type it in the comments section below.

Review a comprehensive archive of the Times-Picayune's Hurricane Katrina coverage, including an animated map of the levee failures. In addition, these books, links,CDs, DVDs and streams might prove helpful. Also, go deep into the musical culture celebrated throughout "Treme" at Nick Spitzer's American Public Media radio series, American Routes. The show is produced in New Orleans, has a searchable archive and holds hundreds of hours of informative, pleasurable listening.

Back at Galatoire’s, Judge Gatling threatens Toni that if she bothers him again before Ash Wednesday, he’ll take her down Bourbon Street and make her drink Hand Grenades. Mardi Gras 2008 was Feb. 5, the same day as the Super Tuesday primaries.

In the “Extinct Restaurants” section of his NOMenu.com website, New Orleans restaurant authority Tom Fitzmorris has a clear-eyed remembrance of the restaurant:

Anthony and his wife Gail cooked their great specials starting early in the morning. They liked seafood mostly, especially when abetted by a lot of garlic and red pepper. The specials done (the kitchen staff would take care of all the frying and shucking), Anthony presided over the customers from behind the bar, keeping track of every table in his head.

There was no printed menu, just an assortment of signs posted behind the bar. Even though Uglesich’s never stopped being a neighborhood joint, its prices entered the gourmet bistro range. I spent thirty to forty dollars every time I went there. (Cash only.)

“Ever since I met the off-camera Emeril, I've wanted to write a scene for him -- where he's like he appears in this episode,” Bourdain said. “Older, ‘darker,’ sadder, with the burden of years of responsibility for hundreds of people -- an empire -- on his shoulders . But also generous and loyal to his friends. I've seen that Emeril -- and it's been a dream to have the opportunity to write a scene like this for him.”

Read more from Bourdain about Lagasse, “Treme” and an upcoming New Orleans episode of “The Layover.”

Davina and Delmond meet Scott and Kimberly Rivers Roberts, whose Katrina flooding footage was made into the documentary “Trouble the Water,” winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal.

“During hurricane season 2011, the Atlantic coast was threatened by a hurricane and all of us New Orleanians were sending advice to our friends in New York and New Jersey,” Rogan said. “At this time, ‘Treme’s’ season three was ramping up for production. I researched and found that a storm was also threatening the East Coast during the hurricane season of 2007. I had pitched the idea to David Simon that Paul would collaborate on songs with McAlary, so Paul and I sat down and composed this one on spec. It was very easy to work with Paul here, the ideas flowed like water, though that’s perhaps not the most appropriate of analogies. Paul and I wrote a couple of tunes for this purpose and I’m happy they picked this one. Gotta say the timing of the airing of this episode is a bit eerie.”

The lyrics:

You got your flashlights and batteries

you know all about your basic needs

but step right up and I'll tell you these

helpful hurricane hints from hell-oooo-uisiana

make a crawfish ettouffe' chill a bottle of wine

it might be the last meal you make on your stove

for a very long time

you best have some candles for sure

a master lock for your front door

and some hard liquor you enjoy at room temperature

You got your flashlights and batteries

you know all about your basic needs

but step right up and I'll tell you these

helpful hurricane hints from hell-oooo-uisiana

get yourself a big juicy steak and a whole chicken

put 'em in the freezer along with every container

you can put water in

when you've waited two days and still

your power and your water are nil

that melted ice'll flush your toilet

you can put that meat on the grill

You got your flashlights and batteries

you know all about your basic needs

but step right up and I'll tell you these

helpful hurricane hints from hell-oooo-uisiana

don't bite your nails or get anxious

watching windswept junior meteorologists

if you want information about the storm above

turn off the damn t.v. go to noaa.gov

that's www.noaa.gov

You got your flashlights and batteries

you know all about your basic needs

but step right up and I'll tell you these

helpful hurricane hints from hell-oooo-uisiana

EVERYBODY!

make a crawfish ettouffe' chill a bottle of wine

it might be the last meal you make on your stove

for a very long time

you best have some candles for sure

a master lock for your front door

and some hard liquor you enjoy at room temperature

Armagnac, cognac any of the yacs will do

if your a grain person then maybe a nicely aged scotch

Anejo Tequilla none of that Blanco (stuff)

and some hard liquor you enjoy at room temperature

As Albert and Lambreaux and his family sew, Sonny Rollins’ “Silk ‘n’ Satin” plays.

It would be appropriate for Marine Corps Band New Orleans to complete its last march of the 2012 Carnival season with a nod to its own, the Marines' Hymn. The Algiers-based band completed its 14th parade of the season in its traditional place, just ahead of Rex.

Also known as the Marine Forces Reserve Band, it marched its last block of the Uptown route on Canal Street about 2 p.m., for a break before performing tonight at Rex’s ball.

Bandmaster Master Sgt. Kevin Hunter, a Morgan City native, estimated each of the parades was seven miles long and thought for a moment of how many miles his Marines have marched this season.

“Let’s call it 150 miles, and probably another 200 in training,” Hunter said.

A half a glass of white wine in his hand and a strand of purple, green and gold beads dangling from his neck, state Rep. Jim Donelon looked as festive as possible for someone who wears a gray suit to a Mardi Gras ball.

But Donelon, like many who attend the Washington Mardi Gras, had more business than pleasure on his mind.

"I didn't want to come. My wife didn't want me to come," said Donelon, a Metairie Republican who is waging a long-shot bid to unseat U.S. Sen. John Breaux, D-La. "But, boy, did I need to be here."

What Donelon needs, he readily acknowledged, is help. Political help. The kind of help in abundance at Washington Mardi Gras, where the rich and well-connected jockey for plastic beads alongside those hoping to catch something a little more lucrative.

For four days every year, lobbyists, business people and politicians mix and mingle their way through a dizzying parade of cocktail parties, brunches, lunches, dinners and blow-out gala balls.

It seems unlikely that the 2,000 or so Louisianians who attend the event come to the nation's capital to sample the laissez-les-bon-temps-roulez flavor. Most of them could get their fill back home, cheaper. For many, the pilgrimage inside the Beltway is more about persuasion than partying.

Kimberly Rivers Roberts wasn't planning on making an award-winning documentary when she picked up her video camera on Aug. 28, 2005. She just wanted to make a dollar or two.

All that the Lower 9th Ward resident and aspiring rapper knew was that an enormous hurricane named Katrina was bearing down on her hometown of New Orleans, and prompting historic hysteria along the way. Without the financial means to evacuate, she figured she might at least be able to sell storm footage collected in her neighborhood. If she survived.

"I was just hustling. I was just looking for a way to make a dollar," Roberts said last week in the endearingly honest tone that has helped turn the Katrina documentary "Trouble the Water" into one of the best-reviewed of the year -- and one that already is generating Oscar buzz.

"I never did think this would ever turn out to be like this," she said. "I didn't think about making a documentary that would capture history -- New Orleans history, black history, American history."

In addition to capturing history, "Trouble the Water" captured the Grand Jury prize in the U.S. documentary category at January's Sundance Film Festival, as well as the hearts of countless movie-goers since the film's theatrical release two weeks ago.

Back at the ball, the Neville Brothers play “Hey Pocky Way.” Later, after meeting the Nevilles off-stage, Annie sits in on Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927.”

It’s there, in Treme, historically the first neighborhood north of the original French Quarter, that the North Side Skull and Bones Gang celebrates Carnival. Under the leadership of its Chief, Bruce "Sunpie" Barnes, they follow a tradition begun in 1819.

“What we do is in the real spirit of Mardi Gras, we think; a sort of shedding of the flesh,” Sunpie explains, adding that it is one way “people give honor to the family spirits that went before them.”

Rising before dawn, costumed as skeletons, the Gang takes seriously their task to “wake folk up to Mardi Gras Day.” There’s a street ritual unique to the group; songs to be sung (one of which came to Sunpie in a dream); young men to be “scared straight”; doors to be knocked on; and all before the sun rises and the parades begin.

On the banks of the Mississippi, Schindler, Poché and others would first dip the ribboned hula-hoops in the water and sweep them back over the people gathered behind, sprinkling droplets over the crowd in a kind of baptism. Then they would set the ashes of their friends upon the water.

The Guardians of the Flame meet the Uptown gang the Golden Comanche and their chief, Wallace Pardo.

As the Hubie Vigreaux Drummers play in the background, Davis and Janette meet Derek Watson (Anthony Anderson), seen earlier this season in the show’s re-creation of “Waiting for Godot.” Watson had to give up working at Stella!